One of the reasons I don’t enjoy chess? The endgame. At some
point in the midgame shuffle, after so much probing, trading of pieces, and
battling it out for an extra pawn, the balance of power tips. The
final result is then a foregone conclusion, at least on paper. There
is nothing left but this pointless chasing and maneuvering until you get the
doomed king trapped in a corner: menaced where he stands, menaced on all
sides, with his own pawn blocking his only square for escape. It’s a
snooze. You might think a cat would like the idea. The outcome
of the classic cat and mouse contest is a foregone conclusion too, nine
times out of ten, and we enjoy that. Maybe mice are just intrinsically
more interesting than chessmen; I don’t know. But I can say from
personal experience that, winning or losing, I put the end of a chess game
right up there with a big turkey dinner, a lullaby, and a snortful of
chloroform.

The chess players in my life obviously disagree. Eddie likes the
endgame because (and I’m quoting) “No ace routs Brainiest Ed.” I
shared this with my traveling companion, who I had dubbed Brubu. It
was Batman inside the Atlantis spy corps’s holographic shell, and while it
might reproduce Ubu’s physical appearance perfectly, I had seen its brow
knit with all of Bruce’s figuring-out-the-new-gizmo expressions while he got
it up and running. After that, no matter how much it resembled Ubu, I
kept on seeing Bruce. Particularly now, since I was talking about
Eddie.

We were in another plasma sub, heading for the surface. Aquaman had
the fish searching around Kapheira, and they’d found the elevator system
Ra’s set up to get his people and prisoners into the sea base. I’d
been chatting to get Brubu’s mind off the fact that he wasn’t driving.
Normally, he could have piloted the sub just fine, but from inside the
prototype Atlantis hologram, it was “an unnecessary layering of unfamiliar
technologies.” Too many unknown variables, risk multipliers, etc.
So the control freak gets to sit in the passenger seat next to Kitty.
I know he hates that kind of thing, so I was doing my best to lighten the
mood. You can’t go too far off “the case” at this point with Batman;
he likes to stay focused. Usually I like breaking his focus, but
that’s my fun. This was an anti-brooding exercise for his
benefit, so I stuck to Ra’s-adjacent subjects like chess. Going up to
the surface in a sub just to come back down in an elevator, it was the kind
of tedium you find at the end of a chess game, and I said as much.

“He’s referring to the academic chess players’ attitude that there comes
a point where you have to accept the inevitable and resign the game once you
realize your position is untenable.”

“Right. If you’re down four pawns, both bishops and the queen,
you’re screwed so…”

“So you concede. But Nigma prefers to play on, because resigning
ignores the possibility of your opponent making a mistake.”

“Or a lot of mistakes,” I corrected, “which in his experience they’re
inclined to do. Let’s face it, present company excepted, most people
Eddie takes on are a lot dumber than he is. No matter what their
technical advantage, if he keeps them dancing long enough, they’ll screw
up.”

Brubu grunted.

“I’d think you’d feel the same,” I guessed. “I mean, forget chess.
Real life, if you played the percentages, we would all be dead years ago.
You, Eddie, Hagen, Joker—even Kitty packing the old eight-life advantage.
We all know from personal gun-in-your-face experience that a foregone
conclusion on paper is no such thing in reality.”

“Y-yes,” Brubu agreed, “and no. Chess is a war game, and playing an
almost certain loss through to the checkmate is the equivalent of making an
enemy burn every farm and kill every peasant in the kingdom. Of course
they may still make a mistake before it comes to that, but at what
cost? A wise king will sometimes surrender, make peace for the good of
the kingdom, knowing in a year or two circumstances will change, there will
be opportunities to reclaim what’s lost.”

“Okay, nice metaphor, but the actual game stops at the board’s
edge, right?”

“Says the jewel thief on an undercover mission to take down Ra’s al
Ghul?”

Selina never had a chance to find out what that last remark meant.
The sub had reached the surface, and from that moment on, Bruce was gone and
Ubu would remain in character until the mission objective was complete.
There were no guards to take out on the platform, and nothing but buttons
and levers inside the elevator. Ubu was stoic, and Catwoman was…
unsatisfied.

From Bruce’s POV, it was a fine performance he was giving. It was
Ubu as Batman had always seen him, a few steps from Ra’s al Ghul’s side:
serious, watchful, disciplined, and alert. As the elevator descended,
Selina couldn’t help contrasting this Ubu with the one she’d ridden down
with earlier. She decided that it wasn’t out of character for her to
give Batman an acting note. After all, the real Ubu had tried to
strangle her four times in their earlier trip to the bottom. If this
was that Ubu, she would get even by tweaking his nose. So… acting note
as nose tweak:

“You’re doing a lot better this time, Ubs,” she said with a teasing
smile. “Last time we approached crush depths, you were positively
green.”

“Silence, woman,” he snarled. Then, under his breath, he added
“Last time, I was the one in chains.”

Tmcra’s panel alerted him as soon as the elevator began its descent, but
he let it reach the bottom of the shaft before taking any action, so that
those inside, if unauthorized, would have no hope of reaching the surface
when ejected. Only when the pressurized car reached the receiving
chamber did he check the receiving docket. He knew from the beginning
of his shift that no arrivals were expected, but he followed the prescribed
procedures all the same. Confirming that no arrivals were scheduled,
he flicked on the camera to demand authorization—and saw Ubu.

Ubu required no authorization, for every DEMON down to the lowliest
pit-stirrer knew that Ubu’s word was only a half step from Ra’s al Ghul’s
own. The doors were opened at once—and Tmcra noted the bodyguard’s
imperfectly concealed dread. He noted it without judgment, for he
shared it. Officially, a man had no past before DEMON. He had no
country, no family, and no name but the one The Great One bestowed on his
unworthy head. But even so, there were those whose non-existent pasts
included water, and those that knew only sand. The ones from sand
were… honored that they could add overcoming abject terror to the
services they rendered in the DEMON’s name. And they all recognized
others who were equally honored.

Tmcra’s colleague H’qai offered to take Ubu’s prisoner to the brig, but
Ubu refused. He announced her status as though she were a person of
some interest to the Demon’s Head: The Feline Consort of He Whose Name Must
Not Be Spoken. A prisoner such as this must be delivered to The
Presence without delay.

Tmcra accepted the statement at face value, but once Ubu and the prisoner
had left, H’qai snickered.

“Any time there is a prisoner from Gotham, they wind up escaping,” he
said cynically. “And that one is the Illustrious Ubu’s alibi. He
wants to make sure The Great One sees her, in the flesh, before she can get
away.”

Arthur had shown us schematics of Kapheira before we’d left Atlantis.

Well, “schematics” is a bit generous. What he showed us first were
more like oil paintings, artists’ renderings from the days when Atlanteans
actually used this place as a military base, and a few sketched floorplans
that were so old and faded that you could barely make out the lines
separating the base from ocean, let alone marking off hallways or individual
rooms. I could feel Bruce seething. Mount Psychbat was about
thirty seconds from erupting when Arthur laughed and said “But it isn’t
every day we have the World’s Greatest Catburglar working for us, and I
thought something flashier was called for. So I had the historians use
the data from those pictures to make up this.”

He stepped through an archway into a room out of Star Trek. In the
center, on a raised platform, was a three-foot hologram of Kapheira, a 3-D
model we could slice open, rotate on any axis and view from any angle.

“World’s Greatest Catburglar is duly impressed,” I said kindly. And
then, sensing that Arthur only started with the oil paintings to needle
Bruce, I added, “This is almost as slick as the holograms in the
Batcave.”

So anyway, thanks to Arthur, we’d gone in with a fairly good idea where
Ra’s would have set up his throne room, and that’s where Brubu was taking me
now. Strategically speaking, there were about twenty war rooms that
would have made better sense, but this is Ra’s we were talking about.
If he has a weakness (and at last count, he had eighty-seven), it’s that
kink for set dressing. He doesn’t care about practical or strategic,
he wants something Ra’s-worthy. In Kapheira, that was the top tower
with a wide port view of the whole base.

We were less certain about the location of the brig, which was our
priority for freeing the hostages. I knew Brubu didn’t want to stay
too long in one place or get too chatty with any one minion, so we left the
elevators as soon as we could, and he stopped the next minion we passed in
the halls.

“I was obliged to go topside before the prisoners were installed,” he
said brusquely. “Which location was finally decided on for their
storage?”

It was a bold move, just flat out asking that way. If he was
disguised as anyone less than Ubu, it might not have worked. But given
the disguise, and a certain knack Bruce has for being bossy and domineering
in the most casual circumstances, we got our answer. The prisoners
were in the West Tower, Level Three.

We went on our way towards the probable throne room… when the lights went
out.

Batman was too experienced to be “pleased” or “satisfied” at this early
stage. The mission was proceeding as expected, and they were roughly
one minute ahead of schedule as far as learning the location of the brig.
It was nothing to begin congratulating themselves over—and, in fact, a less
mature crimefighter who did indulge in self-congratulation at that moment
would have had his thought interrupted by a tell-tale buzz a split-second
before the lights flickered out.

It did not escape Batman’s notice that the buzz began when he’d walked
exactly six paces into a hallway in which there were no other minions, no
doors, and no sightlines from the hall they’d just left. He shifted
his weight to deflect the attack sure to come, but was startled when it came
from four-degrees off the expected angle. It was—ouch—just off enough
that his shifted balance worked against him, and rather than hurling his
attacker over his shoulder using the thug’s own momentum to propel him into
the floor, he wound up…

“Ho, ho, ho. Now I have a scimitar.”

Losing his weapon.

“Yippie kay yay, He who triumphs over death and grave.”

To Tim.

Before Batman could process this development, he was tackled at the
waist. Propelled forward and towards the floor, he registered several
details in the split second it took to twist out of the new attacker’s
chosen trajectory and backhand her into the wall:

- the second attacker was female, about Selina’s height, and had some
training- in one style only, possibly muay thai, and not particularly
good- all of which argued against her being DEMON, which did not train
women (with one unfortunate exception) - and anyone they did train (with
the same unfortunate exception), they trained exceptionally well - she
wore a mask, although not the kind he usually glimpsed on those he
backhanded as he twisted out of a waist tackle. It was more
improvised, from a black cloth tied around her head like a kerchief, like
something a pirate would wear.

In the second it took to turn back and intercept Tim’s coming attack, he
noted that Tim was wearing a similar mask…

And a block later, that Tim had finally recognized his fighting style…

They sparred for a few seconds while Tim’s partner, who must be Dr.
Meadows, picked herself off the floor and (presumably) looked for an opening
to mount a fresh attack. In this leisurely period, Batman noted that
Selina was smirking, and that, while the hallway seemed free of cameras, Tim
was not calling off the attack. That meant they were either
maintaining the charade for watching minions or for Dr. Meadows.
Either way, he couldn’t drop the hologram until he could talk candidly with
Tim.

Rather than wait for Meadows to make her own move, he gave her an opening
and defended with the snapback punch normally reserved for bruisers, pulling
back for momentum and channeling the full weight of his body into the throw,
then shifting the forward motion upward the split second he hit her jaw like
snapping a wet towel.

Down she went… and in some guilty recess of Bruce’s mind, he decided the
Foundation would underwrite her research for the rest of her career.

“Thank you,” Tim said hoarsely. “First freedom I’ve had for days.”

“It’s safe to talk?” Batman asked.

“Oh yeah, these four halls see almost no traffic. That’s why I
picked them to, uh, make our move… rescue Cat. The surveillance and
tactical has been really easy. Demon 101, they’re doing everything
like they always do. The hard part has been convincing E.J. that we’re
just that lucky: finding food unattended, isolated minions to pick off,
power drops n’ stuff.”

“This isn’t your first escapade?” Batman graveled.

“No. Upside: I found an alternative to the Trekkie. Die
Hard.”

“I figured,” Catwoman chimed in. “Ho, ho, ho, now I have a
scimitar?”

“Yippie kay yay,” Tim answered, waving the scimitar at her.

Catwoman laughed.

Brubu scowled.

“Okay, I know I shouldn’t joke,” Tim said, “but you have any idea how
many times I’ve heard the ‘oath of loyalty’ in the last few days.”

I could feel for the kid, but Brubu obviously didn’t.

“That mask isn’t the best idea, considering,” he graveled.

“Well that would be the Dread Pirate Roberta’s idea over there,” Tim
said, pointing at Meadows’s limp form. “I don’t think you appreciate
how nuts that woman is, and how challenging the last few days have been.”

“Actually I can,” Brubu said grimly. “Even in an empty hallway, the
two of you taking on Ubu was far from prudent.”

“We figured Catwoman would help,” Tim murmured.

“Enough,” Brubu barked. “We now have four operatives instead of the
planned three. When Meadows wakes up, you’ll brief her on her part.
Now, here’s what we’re going to do…”

Tmcra returned to his station with a grilled seahorse impaled on a
skewer.

“You want?” he asked H’qai.

H’qai nodded, but rather than handing it over, Tmcra flicked the seahorse
off the end of the skewer with his thumb. H’qai caught it and, as he
munched, he saw Tmcra wrap the end of the stick in a napkin and run it along
the ridges of his keyboard.

“Not again,” H’qai grumbled.

“M’twa and F’gar always eat at their stations,” Tmcra complained.
“I don’t like the crumbs under the keys.”

The only answer to this blatant hypocrisy was a meaty thud. Before
Tmcra could turn to look, he found himself in a boa hold. He just
managed to glimpse H’qai’s unconscious body before he himself fell to the
floor.

As soon as the elevator was taken, Batman touched a button on his utility
belt, and a second on the hologram control. The first sent a pulse to
the two OraComs within range; the second sent a signal to Atlantis…

With Tim’s help, Dr. Meadows slipped in among the other scientists and
began quietly spreading the word: the rescue was coming, be ready to move…

Aquaman smiled wickedly. His part in this Batman-Demon endgame was the
kind of clash he loved. If it wasn’t a duty, it would be a pleasure.
If it wasn’t a crucial diversion, he would do it just for fun. Batman
claimed he would need ten minutes, eleven maybe, twelve at the most, but
Arthur knew he could keep it up for hours if necessary…

Catwoman smiled too, but it wasn’t a wicked smile like Arthur’s. It
was a sublimely contented smile. Using her criminal expertise to help
Batman, if there was any richer cream, she couldn’t imagine what it might
be.

Okay, it wasn’t exactly stealing. Opening the keyhole for the
Atlantean shock troops wasn’t exactly your high-grade B&E on Fifth Avenue,
burgling Tiffanys and coming away with something sparkly. But it was
like opening a safe, a very large, rock, tulip-shaped safe.

Step 1: get to the safe tulip. Wasn’t too hard. Six
guards to be evaded, one taken out with drugged claws.

Step 2: getting into the tulip. I won’t sugarcoat it.
I had to contort. I had to suck in, I had to stretch up, and at one
point, I had to do this thing with my hips that should only be done around a
stripper pole—by somebody else’s hips around a stripper pole.
But I got into the center of the thing, and after that, it was just a matter
of matching these carved marbles from Atlantis with the corresponding
symbol…

Batman disabled the Ubu hologram and took a deep, satisfying breath as
the lumbering bodyguard vanished, revealing his normal shape and costume.
The disguise had been effective as far as it went, but now that he had to
take out the phalanx of minions guarding the scientists, a different mode
was called for. He needed to become proactive, a predator…

“Thermal imaging lenses engage,” he ordered softly, and at once, the
lenses snapped into place inside the cowl, allowing him to see the heat
signatures of men moving behind solid walls. One advantage of the
Atlantean base: built into the side of a mountain as it was, there were
countless outcroppings from the original cavern walls extending over the
man-made ones. They weren’t as smooth as a Gotham gargoyle, but they
were more plentiful. Batman grappled up to the largest one to scan the
area from an optimal vantage point.

As he counted up the minions, Batman’s lips eased into a thin, satisfied
crease that, in another man, might have passed for a smile. As well
trained as DEMON agents were said to be, they shared one trait with the
common street thug: they seldom looked up. He watched their
movements for several minutes, noting the patterns: where they walked, how
quickly, and where their blind spots were as they moved. As in Gotham,
as soon as he gleaned their patterns, he could predict which man would soon
be isolated.

When he identified one, he leapt down quietly, crouched, and at the ideal
moment, took the minion down with a silencing chokehold…

His Majesty, Orin, by the Grace of Poseidon, of Atlantia, Pacifica, and
Dominions beyond the Reefs, King and Defender of the Seas, Duke of
Poseidonis, Sovereign of the Most Ancient and Most Noble Order of Pontos…
breathed.

“Valerina,” he said with a hauteur his aide had never heard before,
“place the call.”

Valerina took a long, deep breath herself. The mechanisms before
her had not been used in over six hundred years. She swallowed, and
painstakingly placed the first power stone on a raised pedestal until the
symbol cut into its surface began to glow. Then she removed it and set
it into the recessed bowl in the com panel marked with the same symbol, and
with a delicate white hand, she began charging the next power stone.

Batman grimaced. The last minion managed to bite him as he placed
his glove over the guy’s mouth, which didn’t slow the takedown or do his
hand any actual harm, but it had torn the glove and exposed bare flesh.
Another bite, while unlikely, could bring more trouble than it was worth.
A new approach was called for.

He’d picked off about a third of the guards, which was not enough to risk
free combat, not in a DEMON compound where they could summon a hundred
reinforcements. He needed to continue thinning their numbers silently
and unobtrusively. He hoisted this last minion, the biter, up to
another outcropping big enough to hold him, and draped him over it… Just in
time. The pudgy one was just coming around the corner. Batman
leapt from his perch, using his cape like a glider, sailing straight for the
guy’s chest. Swinging both feet forward, he slammed into the minion,
knocking him out cold. Once again, he grappled up to the outcropping
with an unconscious minion in tow.

Normally, Batman would allow the remaining henchmen, guards, or thugs to
find their colleagues unconscious. It spread terror and led them to
make stupid mistakes. But not here. Not with DEMONs. If
any one of them sounded the alarm, it could bring a hundred minions from
throughout the compound. A hundred extra minions between the
scientists and the elevator. No, he had to keep picking them off
quietly.

Perhaps he could hide under that floor grate…

Step 2-1/2: scraping. This place was ancient. There were
rings of recessed egg shapes inside the tulip, each carved with the Atlantis
equivalent of a rune. Theoretically, all I had to do was place the
carved marble-gems from Atlantis into the recess with the same symbol.
Except the niches were encrusted with dried slime and who knows what.
If I didn’t have claws, I would have been screwed. As it was, it still
slowed me down. Painstakingly scraping this corroded rock gunk until I
found the symbol.

That brought me to Step 3, at last, placing the first marble-gem.
The rune on the stone and the rune in the recess both started to glow as
they came into contact, which I interpreted as the first “click” finding a
combination. Back to step 2-1/2, scraping away at the next recess.
One down, five to go…

This time, the best part about getting the safe open wasn’t going to be
getting anything out, but what would be coming in…

Batman hung inverted on the zipline from one of the higher outcroppings,
like an oversized version of his namesake. He waited silently until
the tall minion was directly below him, then zipped down, grabbing the man
by the throat, and zipped back up to his perch. A nerve pinch put an
end to the struggling, while Batman wrapped several lengths of Batline
around the minion’s feet.

Thus secured, Batman lowered the minion to dangle upside down in the path
of the remaining guard, who naturally rushed to see what had happened, what
that minion-garbed man-size cocoon was hanging in the middle of the
hallway. As soon as the conscious guard was directly underneath the
unconscious one, Batman cut the line, dropping the latter onto the former…

Ra’s al Ghul examined an antique globe, squinting at two islands in the
Pacific.

“Palau or New Guinea?” he mused. “New Guinea or Palau?”

Before long, his scientists would have produced their first fuel
alterative. Since it was supposed to be mined from the ocean floor, he
wanted a spot far from his present location. So, should his shield
corporation be located in Palau or… No, Palau became a little too
chummy with the United States after World War II, and was a little too
chummy still for his liking. While Ra’s intended to sell to other
countries first, there was no telling at what point exactly the Detective
would interest himself in a developing technology on the far side of the
world. In Indonesian-controlled Misool in the Raja Ampat province of
New Guinea, it would be considerably harder for him to glean information to
connect an emerging energy consortium to DEMON.

Ra’s smiled contentedly at the globe, when the light in the room changed
abruptly as a panel on the wall, that he had not even recognized as a
viewscreen, suddenly sprang to life. A royal crest of seashells held
aloft by dolphins filled the screen, which then, abruptly, was replaced by
the scowling visage of Aquaman.

::Ra’s al Ghul,:: he pronounced with a commanding air Ra’s found
annoying. ::You are trespassing on the sovereign waters of
Atlantis. Anything short of immediate withdrawal will be deemed an act
of war.::

Ra’s al Ghul smiled. This was the kind of confrontation he liked
best. Master to master, king to king.

“You noticed our imperial presence sooner than we expected, King of
Atlantis. Your position, though it comes sooner than anticipated, is,
nonetheless… expected.”

The Demon’s Ego swelled to fill the grandeur of the occasion, matching
wit and wills with a monarch who ruled four-fifth of the globe. The
contest would be gratifying under any circumstances, but today Ra’s had
every tactical advantage, the position he liked best when addressing any
opponent of any rank.

“Your position is clear, concise, and well presented,” he declared
smugly. “My position: this base is mine. It has my troops all
over it, that makes it mine.”

::By what authority, the tip of a sword? You’ll find that
carries no weight down here, Demon’s Head. The rule of LAW applies
under the seas. My law. Atlantis law.::

“Unenforceable ‘law,’” Ra’s sniffed. “Which is to say, a quaint
local custom, like a folk dance performed at peasant weddings. It is
the inevitable error of the inherited monarch: mistaking authority that fell
into your lap by genetic accident for true power. The admirable design
of this base is such that taking it by force is a practical impossibility.
Your claims of ‘law’ are therefore meaningless. You are not in a
position to make demands of any kind. You may, of course, tender a
request, king to king…”

::King to… BECAUSE YOU SIT YOUR ASS ON A VELVET CUSHION?! You
don’t know the first thing about leading men, Ghul, let alone ruling.
A school of bluefins has a better understanding of leadership, a lead tuna
is born with a better grasp of the job than you.::

As Orin railed on, Ra’s caught an unexpected flicker of movement in his
peripheral vision. Not wishing to appear distracted, he shifted his
weight and twisted his shoulder forward, as if adjusting his cape.
That gave him a momentary glance at the strange movement, which turned out
to be nothing more than…

:: Against three pods of killer whales controlled by an alien
intelligence… ::

Catwoman.

:: So don’t think any so-called leader of ‘minions’ can intimidate me.
::

Strolling into his throne room.

:: Pitting each man against ten tons of Brainiac-controlled orca, with
nothing more than a shield and a sea-spear… ::

STROLLING into his room with the studied casualness of a… of an
actual CAT wandering around looking for amusement.

:: Compared to ordering a dozen brainwashed drones against one man
with a utility belt. ::

She waved.

:: And losing every time, I might add. ::

The look on his face was priceless—what little I could see of it, anyway.
At his best, Ra’s looks like he’s covering some serious acid reflux.
When he actually does have his nose out of joint, not a pretty picture.

:: I’m talking about what it MEANS to be a leader, Ghul, the tacit
obligations that go with the ‘sir, yes, sirs.’::

Arthur had obviously built up a head of steam. Which was the idea,
of course, but I think he’d transcended the role he was playing, and now he
was just riding that wave of righteous-crazed hero indignation.

:: My men know their lives aren’t put in danger to gratify a whim or
make a point, and that’s why I command their loyalty and respect. I
don’t give a damn what a trumped up prawn like you thinks about kings and
kingship— ::

Ra’s, in a fit of grandeur befitting Shatner, swished his cape and turned
to the side. From Arthur’s point of view, I’m sure it was supposed to
look menacing, sort of Dracula ala mode. From my angle, it just
seemed like he didn’t want to look at me. Which meant the real
diversion was working. Meow.

:: You’re not as good at this as I thought you’d be, Ghul. After
the first exchange of bellows, you fall back into huffing and making faces.
I don’t think you have the stuff to speak for a kingdom. ::

Arthur’s part was great, as far as it went, but even with Ra’s ego, there
were limits. Holding his attention in a king-to-king bluster-off might
be enough when it was just Batman picking off minions, but once I’d opened
the keyhole and aqua troops started storming the base, it was iffy. A
king-to-king bluster-off alone probably couldn’t hold his attention, but
trying to keep up appearances in a king-to-king bluster-off while the hated
arch-nemesis’s girlfriend wanders around your throne room… Even now it
makes me laugh. If he wasn’t such a creep, you’d almost feel sorry for
him.

It didn’t really matter what I did while I was wandering, so to
amuse myself, I looked for the swords. Bruce has mentioned that, hype
aside, the one thing that actually does distinguish the hairdo from other
villains is that Batman never gets to punch him in the face. Joker,
Two-Face, Scarecrow, Hatter, eventually they all reach the end of the line,
the henchmen are all lying on the floor, and Batman gets to take out his
righteous crimefightery anger on their teeth. With Ra’s, every damn
time when it gets down to just the two of them, it’s fencing!
Batman would love to punch him in the face, but no. Ra’s gets up, out
come the swords, and everybody’s on the deck of an 18th Century
pirate ship. So it occurred to me that, since I was right there in the
throne room, it would be a nice gesture. Early birthday present for
Bruce: find the swords, lock ‘em away in a drawer, and just this once, Ra’s
al Ghul, the self-proclaimed greatest Bat-foe, gets to find out what it
really means to take on Batman and lose. Hee hee.

:: Which means you’ll never be able to hold on to anything you
‘conquer,’ Ghul. Oh, I’ve seen your type before, dozens of times.
Going to redefine the world and decree everything to your liking. This
is this, and that is thus, because I have declared it to be, the end.
A high tide later, nobody even remembers you. And all your decrees and
declarations are nothing but a rancid puddle of sand. ::

Finding the swords was no problem. Cat burglar’s instinct. I
knew they had to be in easy reach of the throne, so he could be posed in all
his “Ah, there you are, Detective, how pleasant to see you again” pomposity.
So I wandered over to the throne, which brought two more magnificent
cape-swishes as Ra’s seemed determined to hide me from Arthur…

:: Atlantis could surrender right now, Ghul, and it wouldn’t change a
thing. In two migration cycles, you’ll be gone. In four you’ll
be forgotten. In ten, it’ll be as though you never existed. ::

…and there they were in a jewel encrusted footstool that was too low for
anyone sitting on the throne to rest their feet. It had no business
being there unless it was a box for something.

Ra’s was doing his best to ignore the defilement of his throne room by
the infidel feline abomination. He could not allow a mere woman to
inhibit his performance in front of a rival monarch. He simply had to
maintain an appearance of… sword. She was… she was sharpening her
claws on the blade of his… this was intolerable.

:: I don’t feel I have your full attention there, sir,:: the
viewscreen scoffed. :: I would think that with something as important as
this discussion that your full attention would be on the task at hand.
I see now the kind of ‘leader’ I'm dealing with. ::

Catwoman let out a low whistle, and Ra’s flung himself forward on what he
assumed to be the mute button.

“Look, it’s not my place to say,” Catwoman shrugged as the screen went
dark. “But if you let him get away with all that pontificating on a
first encounter, that’s going to define your relationship. I mean,
c’mon, Ra’s. We’re talking about Justice League heroes here. You
don’t break their rhythm when they start laying down the law that way,
you’re always going to be the overhyped goatherd that let Aquaman
take him out for a ride.” She smiled pleasantly, and then pointed to
the panel behind him. “I think you hung up on him.”

Ra’s sputtered, but before he could say more, the viewscreen hummed, and
once again King Orin scowled down on the throne room.

:: I see, so that is how you play things, eh, Ghul? That is the
best answer you can muster when your sham philosophy is challenged and your
paltry intrigues are exposed for the sorry efforts they are? I begin
to think Batman and the Justice League have been giving you too much credit
over the years. ::

“Hairdo,” Catwoman agreed in a barely audible sing-song.

:: Egregiously overestimated, that will be your epitaph, Demon’s Head.
My armies will make short work of this little invasion of yours. You can
expect them at the gates any minute now to wipe you from the ocean floor. ::

“Door’s open!” Catwoman called out happily. Then she whispered
confidentially at Ra’s, “that’s where I was before I came here. Doors
are my specialty,” and concluded with an impish wink.

:: Although truthfully, sending an army is overkill for an outdated
cliché like you. One well-trained squad will do. One squad of my
best men, kicking in the back door and taking you right there in the throne
room. ::

On cue, the doors opened and two lines of elite Atlantean Cetea marched
into the throne room, weapons drawn. As the first pair reached the
middle of the room, they fanned out slightly, as did the pair that followed
and the pair following them, forming a perfect arrowhead formation by the
time the first two reached Ra’s al Ghul. As the last two separated,
perfectly framed at the very end of the line stood… Batman.

Epilogue

Catwoman stretched out luxuriously on the lush sofa in the diplomatic
quarters she shared with Batman.

“You look happy,” he noted with a liptwitch.

“Oh I am,” she purred. “So far, for a girl used to coming away with
Catherine the Great’s emeralds at the end of the night, crimefighting has
been a bit light on the perks and prizes. This was new. Seeing
Ra’s face at the very moment of ‘checkmate?’ Meooooooow. That’ll
hold me for a while.”

“It’s much more than checkmate,” Batman said seriously. “In the
past, Ra’s has always holed up in these third world principalities or old
Iron Curtain states where it’s impossible to arrest him. The local law
enforcement is either too inept to hold him or too corrupt to even try.
But here…”

“Here, ‘local law enforcement’ is Arthur,” Selina smiled, completing the
thought, and Batman nodded. “So unlike when you catch up to him in
East Turduckenstan, it doesn’t end with shutting down his plot against NATO.
You got to actually haul his ass into a jail cell to pay for his crimes like
any cheap thug.”

“I sense mockery in the choice of words,” Batman said, raising an eyebrow
under the mask.

“Some phrases will never trip off my tongue, Lover. But where Ra’s
is concerned, I do support the sentiment. He was going to blow me up,
he kidnapped sixty people and murdered one of his own in cold blood. I
don’t want to see him get away with that: ‘Oh, no harm done,’ and we all
just pretend it never happened. No way, not good enough, not even
close. I want to see him punished. Partially because I’m
a villain at heart, I hate his guts and I would enjoy seeing him suffer.
But mostly because if we make an example of him, then maybe we don’t have to
do this again three years down the line.”

Again, Bruce’s lip twitched. She was more of a crimefighter than
she knew, and he would have told her so if only she’d take it as a
compliment. Since she wouldn’t, he just kissed her cheek and told her
to finish packing.

He said I could take a plasma sub to the surface and return to Gotham
with Tim and the scientists, or go back with him in the teleporters.
Now, I’m no fan of the Justice League, but a ten-minute layover at the
Watchtower with Bruce versus a slow boat to Gotham with Mr. Manure
Methanator, “just one Foundation grant away from making jet fuel out of pig
poop?” No contest.

Valerina walked us to the transporters—by way of the detention area being
reoutfitted for a new, long term resident. She said Atlantean jail
cells were opulent by surface standards, but with King Orin strolling in a
couple times a week to “adjust the pressure settings” personally, Ra’s was
in for a rough couple of years.

“His Majesty has told me of an ancient surface ruler, a Julius Caesar,
who would shame his defeated foes with gestures of mercy and friendship when
he had every right to order their deaths. This is the course of
punishment King Orin has decided upon for Ra’s al Ghul. Atlantean law
does consider his crimes a capital offense, but the king has never handed
down a death sentence and says he will not consider breaking the precedent
for that… what is the term… ‘hairdo?’”

I could feel Batman’s eyes on me, so I avoided them and changed the
subject.

“Well, I certainly agree with that,” I said brightly. “Death is
really too good for him. But living the rest of his days as a pet
poodle when he used to be a man, that’s a punishment that fits the crime, in
Ra’s case at least.”

We were approaching the teleporters, and I knew Arthur was waiting there
to meet us when I heard his laugh.

“A pet poodle, eh? That’s good. I wish I’d thought of that.
I went with ‘Clemency is the prerogative of a true king.’”

“That’s good too,” I winked. Batman glowered, like he always does
when I wink at other heroes.

“Plus, once a week, an attaché will visit him in his cell,” Arthur
stated, in a brisk moving on/summing up tone. “To talk about how he
learned about Kapheira’s existence in the first place.”

“To Atlanteans, every conflict is a learning experience,” Valerina
explained. “This crisis passed without casualties, but if there had
been Atlanteans injured or killed, we would owe it to them to learn all we
could from the experience.”

Batman’s head pulled back suddenly, as if he’d been physically struck.

“You know, that’s one thing Ra’s has never done,” he murmured.
“Learned from his mistakes. You’d think anyone who’s lived that long
would… but no.”

“I imagine that’s what makes him a hairdo,” Valerina said happily.

We said our goodbyes, and I could tell there were a few telepathic
exchanges going on behind the verbal ones. When we were home in the
cave, I asked Bruce what it was about.

He told Arthur he should hang on to that new assistant. She “had a
lot more going on than the previous ones.”

And Arthur said… Ditto.

“I’m sorry, Professor. I’m not dropping any classes, but I am
definitely changing my major. Science just isn’t for me.”

“Tim, you haven’t declared a major,” Professor Milpini said mildly.

“I know, but you and my advisor had me on a science track, picking all
these electives that would dovetail into an applied sciences major, and I’m
just saying I’m not doing that anymore. My next elective is going to
be a history of American film.”

“Tim, this is a mistake. You’re making a very rash decision based
on a, a one in a million happenstance. Scientists do not routinely get
kidnapped by international terrorists.”

“Yeah, I get that, Professor. But what I saw of Dr. Meadows and
some of the others, I just don’t think it’s my thing.”

“But you have a real aptitude!” Milpini cried.

“A history of American film,” Tim said happily, reading through the
catalog of freshman seminars available exclusively to honors students.

“To have delivered a paper to the junior symposium your first semester!”
Milpini wailed.

“Or maybe Introduction to Journalism,” Tim read eagerly.

“An honorable mention as a freshman. Invited to the senior
symposium and introduced to the very researchers you footnoted…”

“Hey, look at this one—the Sociology of Superheroes. 3 credits. Afternoon
lectures, I’d get to sleep in. And no prerequisites.”